Positive emotions are highly valued and frequently sought. Beyond just being pleasant, however, positive emotions may also lead to long-term benefits in important domains, including work, physical health, and interpersonal relationships. Research thus far has focused on the broader functions of positive emotions. According to the broaden-and-build theory, positive emotions expand people’s thought–action repertoires and allow them to build psychological, intellectual, and social resources. New evidence suggests that positive emotions—particularly gratitude—may also play a role in motivating individuals to engage in positive behaviors leading to self-improvement. We propose and offer supportive evidence that expressing gratitude leads people to muster effort to improve themselves via increases in connectedness, elevation, humility, and specific negative states including indebtedness.

Although a great deal of research has tested the longitudinal effects of regularly practicing gratitude, much less attention has been paid to the emotional landscape directly following engagement in gratitude exercises. In three studies, we explored the array of discrete emotions people experience after being prompted to express or recall gratitude. In Studies 1 and 2, two different gratitude exercises produced not only greater feelings of gratitude relative to two positive emotion control conditions (i.e., recalling relief), but also higher levels of other socially relevant states like elevation, connectedness, and indebtedness. In a third study, conducted in both the U.S. and S. Korea, we compared a gratitude exercise to another positive emotion elicitation (i.e., recalling a kind act) and to a neutral task, and again found that the gratitude exercise prompted greater gratitude, elevation, indebtedness, and guilt, but no more embarrassment or shame, than the two comparison conditions. Additionally, in all three studies, emodiversity and cluster analyses revealed that gratitude exercises led to the simultaneous experience of both pleasant and unpleasant socially-relevant states. In sum, although it may seem obvious that gratitude exercises would evoke grateful, positive states, a meta-analysis of our three studies revealed that gratitude exercises actually elicit a mixed emotional experience—one that simultaneously leads individuals to feel uplifted and indebted.

Could 10 minutes of gratitude per week have the potential to change the trajectories of young students' lives? With over one thousand 9th and 10th grade students, we tested whether a simple 4-week classroom-based gratitude intervention would prompt increases in well-being and motivate students to become better people and attain better grades. Over the course of 1 month, students were assigned to spend 10 minutes each week writing gratitude letters to their parents, teachers, coaches, or friends and completing additional gratitude-related reflection activities or to try to become more organized each week by listing their daily activities and reflecting on the obstacles and benefits (control). Importantly, relative to controls, students in the gratitude conditions reported greater life satisfaction and motivation to improve themselves and maintained these levels throughout the semester. This sustained self-improvement motivation and life satisfaction were partially mediated by increases in feelings of connectedness, elevation, and indebtedness. Interestingly, negative affect partially mediated the effect of gratitude on life satisfaction, but not on improvement motivation. No group differences emerged in academic performance over time. This study provides evidence that expressing gratitude and reflecting on their benefactors' actions may help keep high school students motivated and satisfied with their lives over the course of a semester.

Gratitude has been associated with better physical health. Yet, surprisingly little research has experimentally investigated the capacity of gratitude to motivate individuals to eat more healthfully. In Study 1, among undergraduate students (N = 327) attempting to achieve a healthy eating goal, state gratitude following a writing activity significantly predicted healthier eating behavior 1 week later. In Study 2, across a 4-week intervention, 9th and 10th grade students (N = 1017) from four high schools were randomly assigned to either write weekly gratitude letters or to list their daily activities each week (control). Teens who expressed gratitude reported healthier eating behavior over time, relative to controls, and this effect was partially mediated by reductions in average negative affect across the intervention period. Thus, our findings suggest that gratitude-based interventions may facilitate improvements in healthy eating behavior in adolescents and young adults. The relationship between gratitude and healthNoticeably absent from the literature on positive psychological

Although research suggests that Eastern, collectivist cultures do not benefit as much from practicing gratitude compared to Western, individualist cultures, the reasons for these differences remain unclear. In a single time-point randomized controlled intervention, participants in India (N = 431), Taiwan (N = 112), and the U.S. (N = 307) were randomly assigned either to write a gratitude letter to someone who had done a kind act for them, to write a gratitude letter to themselves for a kind act they had done for another person, or to complete a neutral control writing activity. Immediately after completing their assigned writing activity, participants completed measures of state gratitude, elevation, and emotions (guilt, indebtedness, embarrassment, positive affect, and negative affect). U.S. (but not Indian and Taiwanese) participants who expressed gratitude reported greater state gratitude relative to controls. Although not explicitly grateful, however, Indian and Taiwanese participants who wrote gratitude letters reported higher elevation (and Indian participants, reduced negative affect) compared to control participants. Finally, compared to control participants, Taiwanese (but not U.S.) participants felt less guilty when writing a gratitude letter to themselves. The results provide new insights for why expressing gratitude may be a less effective happiness-promoting activity in collectivist cultures.

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Although gratitude is typically conceptualized as a positive emotion, it may also induce socially oriented negative feelings, such as indebtedness and guilt. Given its mixed emotional experience, we argue that gratitude motivates people to improve themselves in important life domains. Two single-timepoint studies tested the immediate emotional and motivational effects of expressing gratitude. We recruited employees (n = 224) from French companies in Study 1 and students (n = 1026) from U.S. high schools in Study 2. Participants in both studies were randomly assigned to either write gratitude letters to benefactors or outline their weekly activities (control condition). Expressing gratitude led to mixed emotional experiences (e.g., greater elevation and indebtedness) for employees and students as compared with the control group. Students also felt more motivated and capable of improving themselves, as well as conveyed stronger intentions to muster effort towards self-improvement endeavors.

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